Shift the World to Suit Us
by nancystagerat
Summary: Careful the ones who twist and blur the edges of reality, for they will blur into each other as well. Arthur/Ariadne.
1. All Too Real

She is free with her kisses and free with her words-

_(I love you, I love you, I-) _

-but her heart hides behind the bruises that slide from limb to limb beneath her skin. She dreams vividly. She blurs the line between what's real and what's in her head, and sometimes she'll feel the repercussions, good and bad, long after she wakes. He's noticed what the dreaming often does to her, and only once has he asked if she was alright afterwards; she's not sure whether to be thankful or nervous that Arthur knows to let her decide when enough is enough.

_(It does not do to dwell in dreams)_

She wonders sometimes if he's something of her own creation, spun out of nothing from the middle of the maze, and her heart will race and her fingers will drop to the chesspiece in her pocket and only half the time is she placated by it. The other half fears she'll wake up.

_(Hey. Hey, hey, look at me, you're okay. You're okay.)_

The days feel so much like falling, like the bottom's dropped out of her stomach and her heart's all lodged up in her throat, and a part of her is afraid to wonder what would happen in her dreams if she gets too used to feeling the kick while conscious.


	2. Sound and Silence

He calls her Aria _(precise, beautiful, emotive, creative)_ in the hours you'd find most people dreaming. They're often dreaming themselves, but in the end it never matters if they're lucid or alseep-the emotions and sensations are the same.

It's not a pet name, not by any means; Eames calls people by pet names. _(darling, he's called her, and kitten, and pet, and she smiles at how it makes her lover bristle every time)_ Arthur, though, is much more private, even delicate, with his endearments.

Her name on his lips, a whisper, a butterfly kiss that's all at once as elegant and opulent as the rooms he's dreamt for them, sounds like a secret murmured from composer's lips to paper. There is music in his throat _(an opera in her ears-don't wake, not yet)_ and he transcribes it against the inside of her wrists as if she's something fleeting and lovely, a song he'll forget like filigree curls of cigarette smoke if trusted to his memory alone.

His lips trace the staves her tendons raise beneath the skin and in her head he's a musician, better suited for listless languid art than for deception _(he plays her like a violin, all deft and gentle fingers on her strings)_, but he'd rather play only to her audience of one, and she will keep his secrets spun like music in his breath against her ear.


	3. Lost Things

It was supposed to get easier after the Fischer job. He's supposed get used to people like he got used to sharing his headspace; you draw them in but keep that last iota of distance to protect yourself-

_(from her, from him, from making Cobb's mistakes and maybe even from making his own) _

-and keep your head your own. He swears there must be a way for the people he lets in to leave his dreams still holding to some minuscule piece of him-he never seems to notice things are missing until it's too late, and for all his research and care and precision he can't seem to prevent losing a little more to her every time he sleeps.

_(she's stealing things he'll never get back)_

Even in his rare organic dreams he'll find her, and most times his hand will seek the red die in his pocket, just to be sure. But he forgets it more often than he likes to think about.

_(is reality ever really better than our dreams?)_

He knows she's nothing more than his projection, her details a little too foggy, her body vague where his memories fail to flesh it out, but he'll dip his face into the curve where her neck meets her shoulder

_(he's memorized the angle but the measurement escapes him)_

and breathe in the lavender he imagines at the spot just behind her ear. He wants to pretend she's reality. He wants to get lost in her. He wants more than is safe to pursue.

_(when you can dream anything, why return to what you have?)_


	4. Grasp

The morning after, he stares after her brisk steps across the warehouse to the workbench. She busies her hands with her models and mockups and his eyes catch the sway of slender hips, the silky pale strip of bare flesh above her jeans as she slides onto one of the stools

_(all he can think of is how the jut of her pelvic bones fit against his palms)_

Too suddenly his world narrows to her lip caught between her teeth in concentration, and the way she's tossed an errant lock of hair behind her shoulder is far more inappropriate than it has right to be.

_(he pushes his hands through her tumble of curls to hold the kiss to his throat)_

He shuffles the case file rather more violently than is necessary and searches the table beside her for a pencil, ignoring the three that lay quite obviously within his easy reach.

"Those not good enough for you?" she asks, her voice an upward lilt to match the half-smile, and nudges the Ticonderogas toward his hand.

_(she laughs and he can feel the smile on her lips against his collarbone) _

Arthur raises an eyebrow and steals the pencil tucked behind her ear.

_(there's really very little else worthy enough to occupy his mind or his hands ever again) _

"This one's sharper."


	5. Voids

Ephemeral music curls around her thoughts, like drops of blood bursting in delicate red tendrils through water, and though the song's the same it's always different

_(different places, different dreams, different lives they've lived together in the abyss)_

when it plays in dreams she shares with no one but herself. Odd, how they've become so like life, the dreams. Even to the point where she finds herself wanting to share a good number of them.

_(A projection-it's him but it's not, his skin's not warm enough, his face not quite as defined)_

The weeks since parting ways at LAX seem much longer than what's real. Days between them stretch out, linear and predictable and jarring like shards of glass beneath her feet, compared to the fluid, exponential lives she'd felt in that Paris warehouse. Time is cold.

_(he presses into her, bodies flush and heartbeats shared-warm but not the raw heat she remembers)_

He's dropped clean off the earth. He's left an ache in parts of her she hadn't known were empty, but she isn't surprised; there isn't much else to expect from a man bred to disappear, nor from the girl who shapes whole cities to suit her. He's dissolved into the blood and water of her dreams, and maybe it's safer that way.

_(disappear with me, in the worlds I'll make for us)_

The music sharpens; shrill and tinny and too real to be the same French from her memories. _Non, je ne regrette rien_-except it skrieks from her phone on the side table. His name blinks on the screen above the time-4:16 AM.

_(disappear with me) _


	6. From Whence We Came

They return to the hotel, his hotel-the second level, only this time their visit is as slow and unhurried as the first was a frenzy of nerves. She'd stop to admire every last detail, commit them to memory all over again for pure pleasure this time around if _(his lips weren't against her ear and his breath against her neck not quite so warm) _she wasn't so preoccupied.

He leads her to a different floor, different hallway, different room than the one she remembers, and this time his fingers tangle with hers on the way up the stairs _(much better than elevators for stealing kisses between floors)_, and her hair tumbles down her back and the dream would feel surreal if it wasn't already so familiar.

Deja vu is a better term _(hasn't she fallen into this bed before-? no, no, it's his mouth that feels the same)_, and Ariadne knows, and Arthur most definitely knows, that memory is an unsafe thing to play with. But this time seems to be a special case; after all, a place built for a dream can't be mistaken for reality. At least, not by the both of them.

"I'm happy," she says, infusing the kiss with her smile, and her nose nudges his and for just a single split second he thinks he could get used to the messy, ragged edges love is leaving on his heart. He could stay here because_ (this is reality for them in this moment)_ it is where she is. She, Ariadne, all of her, every inch of her body tangible and real in his hands, the one thing he would never even at his wildest dream differently.

_(dangerous, dangerous, pull back from the edge before you fall and it's too late)_

In the end it's the very feel of her, the arches and curves and sharp lines of his flesh against hers, that wrench him back to the truth. She is solid where the rest of this world is malleable, filling in all the gaps his mind would have left blank. Her starkness is what puts the dream to shame.


	7. Making Progress

Ariadne has gotten fairly proficient at avoiding his projections, and has learned to be more subdued while building in dreams that aren't her own. It draws less attention to her, and a smidgen of pride wells in him that she seems to have outfoxed him for the time being. Or, at least, he'd like to believe it's her skill rather than his willingness to share his headspace with her that's caused his defenses to slacken.

_(he will lie awake later, wondering if loving Mal had done the same to Cobb)_

For now, though, he appraises how she's reined herself in, keeping her creations subtle and careful while she gallivants around in someone else's head. The breeze, the way it winds around their bodies, dances through the wisps trailing from the edges of the clouds overhead and catches the flag she's replaced with the same paiseley print as her scarf...it's marvelous. The birds need work, though-no pigeon in a city is that skittish-and she notices just a minute too late that it's made him narrow his eyes.

_(he will push her farther tomorrow; be more careful, you can never be to careful)_

"I'll fix it next time, then," she says, scanning his face for a yea or nay answer. "Maybe seagulls at a beach or something."

_(he will have a difficult time scrutinizing the dream rather than the bows cinching her bikini to her hips)_


	8. Dark of the Night

He's lean and wiry beside her in bed, and she could run her fingers over the ridges of muscle and bone _(she will try to replicate each arch and angle later, and hope no one will recognize her dream-spun world for what it is)_ but gets distracted suddenly by the smoothness of his face.

His hair is a mess across his forehead and his closed eyes are peaceful, but what gets to her most is the absence of the little crease between his eyebrows-it transforms his whole face into someone else, someone younger and less hunted than the Arthur she knows. Ariadne hasn't the foggiest what monsters lurk in his past or under his bed _(she knows precious little about him at all, and sometimes it scares her but mostly she accepts it for what it is)_ but her desire to know is outweighed by this new and marrow-deep need to coexist with him. Really it's quite a bit more than just coexistence at this point, but it's messy and the boundaries are sketchy and she has no better word for it.

The line of his pelvis is sharp where the sheets pool around him and she follows his contours with her fingertips, delights in the wave of shivers that arcs beneath his skin. He doesn't stir, and Ariadne can't decide if she's relieved or disappointed by it; lying awake at night is less distressing with company, and maybe if she were otherwise occupied she wouldn't be wondering what it is she's gotten herself into.

_(she can't fathom why the darkness makes her worry when he's made her feel more alive than anything else)_


	9. Limbo

There comes a day when his worst fears rear their ugly heads like a monster out of long-forgotten myth, and he washes up with her on that godforsaken shore and for the first time in years, he remembers what true panic feels like.

_(the wash of ice and glass and acid through his veins, pumped by a hummingbird heart hell-bent on destroying what's left of him)_

She gasps for air beside him. Fear spreads like a rumor and his mind kicks into fifth gear, reeling and cursing and _what-have-I-done_'s chasing themselves in his head. He feels her against his side, wet and heavy like the clothes hanging off his body; he wants to grab her arms and help her up, but most of all he can't bear to look at her and see the accusation he anticipates splashed across her face.

_(all those mistakes he'd researched away, he knew it was too far, dammit, he knew-but he was desperate and pushed til the levels rebelled and he damned himself and lost them anyway)_

He takes her hands and helps Ariadne clamber to the sand. She coughs hard. Nothing stretches out until infinity before them. Nothing. Blank canvas and seas. Infinite potential-and in the creases of his mind where he doesn't dare elaborate, he staggers beneath the possibilities of what they might create here.

_(there's a library in his imagination, full of dust and books with yellowed, curling edges, and she is curled up in his lap in a creaking leather armchair, basking a pool of light that drapes down from the windows)_

He needs to get them out of here.


	10. Smile Lines

"I wish I got to see these more," she says, and fits her fingertip against the dimple in his cheek. "You don't smile nearly enough. Or laugh."

_(maybe he does, maybe he doesn't-she is the only one who ever sees most of them)_

"Just because I'm not smiling doesn't mean I'm not happy." Arthur props himself up on one elbow, takes the hand she's brought to his face and kisses her knuckles. "Right now, for instance, I am perfectly content to lie here with you until the world ends. It's not really a grinning-ear-to-ear kind of feeling."

_(it's the kind that settles back behind his lungs, and spreads out through his chest with a sort of warmth that just might feel like peace, or damn close to it) _

"Well, look at you, being all romantic." Ariadne gives him a smirk that's almost like she wants to hide the way her eyes are staring past him. He likes the way she looks all lost in thought.

_(he loves how her eyes soften when they fall on him) _

"I wasn't trying to be," he says, and laces their fingers together, rolls onto his back. "I was just stating a fact for the sake of my argument." She gives him a look, cheek braced on her palm, and half his mouth turns up at the corner.

_(she leans over to press those smirking lips to his, her hair falls against his cheek and hides his face and Arthur smiles then, for real)_


	11. Going Under

Arthur has an elegant neck. She'd love to try and recreate it in some way this next time she Dreams _(the flow of muscle connecting the hinge of his jaw and his collarbone, the gentle dip beneath his throat)_, and hopes she'll remember the fall of lines and shadows after the Somnalin kicks in. Of course she's got more important things to worry about finishing precisely, they have a job to do that she's loath to jeopardize in any way, but maybe one building somewhere, where its edifice might rise above a portion of her skyline...not conspicuous, and maybe even understated off to the side of a couple more prominent structures. There if you look for it. Something to be admired, perhaps from a distance.

_(she lays kiss after kiss upon his throat, and delights in the moans they draw from him)_

A line leads from her wrist, the hair-thin needle slipped like water under her skin; Ariadne barely feels it going in anymore. Dreaming through the Pasiv's become something like second nature by this point _(she shouldn't be so proud of it but it's hard to help herself, really)_, and fuzzily she thinks that it's a good thing she'd never harbored a fear of injections as a child.

She feels his fingers on her wrist, checking the connection before he puts himself under with her. The last thing she does before the sedative hijacks her thoughts is fit her fingers around the bishop in her pocket, just to be sure it's there. Though, sometimes, she isn't really sure if it anchors her to anything. _(if she doesn't know what she's feeling, it's possible she isn't feeling at all)_ It's still possible, she thinks, that this is all just a very exciting night's sleep. But at least it's a comfort she remembers how she got here.

_(Arthur kisses her hair, and carries her to bed)_


	12. On Last Nerves

There is one night, just one night, after a harrowing job gone bad, where the three of them are forced to get lost quickly. _(she finds it hard to believe that between three well-traveled people none of them have ever set foot in Halifax before) _

They're silent, Arthur and Eames, trudging through snowy streets with a vengeance usually reserved for surviving the deepest levels of the dream, shoulders hunched against the wind and hard eyes set dead ahead as if they'd rather be anywhere than within the same thousand miles of each other. It sets her nerves on edge _(and her jaw clenches around grit teeth because they're both brilliant, petulant children) _and goddamn, if they can't live with each other they'll never find a place to spend the night. She's so angry she's tempted to muddle her way back home, right now, alone, and Eames has to grab her elbow and pull her after him through the shabby hotel door Arthur grudgingly wrenches open.

There's only one grimy, musty closet of a room available. Eames throws his hands in the air and spins on his heel _(Arthur almost looks smug through the shock in his eyes)_, but damn them both, she will not let them walk away from each other like this, and grabs Eames' sleeve in one hand and the room key in the other.

Arthur is all stony silence through Eames' protests when she throws the door open and yanks the bedcovers back _(they scare her this way, somewhere deep and buried by her rage)_, and she pulls off her jacket and climbs into the middle of the mattress.

"Get in bed, both of you. And grow the fuck up."

Arthur throws his coat over the chair; there's a dare in his face when he looks at the Englishman, but says nothing when Eames takes the side of the bed to Ariadne's left.

_(when she wakes her body is wrapped around Arthur's, pulled in close by his arms, and even Eames has thrown a protective arm over her waist)_


	13. Youth

"Where'd you grow up?" he asks. _(there's that half smile on his face, the one that makes her stomach do interesting things when it reaches his eyes) _"Stateside?"

"New Jersey," she obliges. _(she leans forward with her elbows on her knees and Arthur has to do the same to see her face through her hair)_ "With my Stepford Wives neighbors and their cookie-cutter Levitt houses and those perfect lawns I really, really hated."

"Jeez, that bad?"

_(his quiet laughter and those tiny smile lines at the corners of his eyes)_

"This one bitch would yell at me if I so much as nicked the edging with my rollerblades. So I made sure I only let my dog shit in their grass."

_(real laughter, from the both of them) _

"I'd ask you the same thing," she says, "but something tells me I won't get a straight answer."

_(no, don't let it leave your eyes, no, no, no—)_

"Nah, probably not." He leans back against the bench and she's lost him for the moment, consumed by things he'd have much rather stayed buried. She decides not to ask again. "I will tell you, though, that I was an asshole when I was a kid."

_(it makes her laugh before she can think to hold it back)_

"Who, you?" she pretends to think about it for a minute, then grins evilly and hopes it hides the consuming curiosity in her head. "Yep, I can see it."

_(he shoves her shoulder and she's just glad he's laughing again)_


	14. Left and Leaving

There is no other way out of the dream than the gun she points to his head.

_(all she can see is his face contorted in pain and she knows it's a dream but she's paralyzed and she can't pull the trigger she can't )_

"Ariadne-"

_(goddammit, get us out of here)_

It's either kill him or wait until projections tear them apart, and Eames is howling for her to get them the fuck out before it's too damn late, he can't hold them off much longer and god, there's so much blood-it's never bothered her before, but it was never _Arthur's_ blood-

_(one projection tears open Eames' arm and he roars)_

_"Ariadne!"_

_(do it now, now, _now_-)_

Her gun reports and Arthur bolts awake, dress shirt soaked through at the back with sweat, and now all there is to do is wait those last agonizing moments before she and Eames wake, before they can all turn tail and disappear.

_(it kills him to be the one pulling the trigger on her first, but there is nothing, _nothing_ in this or any imagined world like the agony of leaving her behind)_


	15. Clandestine

_(kiss me quick, I want to seal your name against my lips)_

The top of her head barely reaches his chin, and she has to stand on her toes to press a swift kiss to the hinge of his jaw.

_(before anyone notices)_

He doesn't smile, not even the half-smirk she's so used to seeing his face fall into. But the fine laugh lines crease around his eyes and she sits to busy her hands assembling the pieces of her model, hiding her smile behind the manila folder she holds between her teeth.

_(kisses on her neck, her wrists, the crease behind her knee)_

He slides onto the stool beside her, takes the folder from her mouth and ignores the faint lipgloss smear her lips have left upon the paper. Long fingers separate the pages of the case file he's been augmenting for days.

_(we can't do this here) _

His other hand drops beneath the table, and brushes up the inside of her thigh. Neither of them see the knowing, cheshire grin that slides across one half of Eames' face.

_(I don't care)_


	16. Under the Spray

She's in every organic dream he has, after the Fisher job. They are the first his mind has allowed him in years, and he's forced, weeks afterward, to admit that even nightmares are an improvement over nothing.

_(though it's Ariadne who pulls the trigger in his head and sends him reeling back to life)_

His shoulder aches with the ghost of old wounds and every time he has to get up, busy his hands, anything to push away the images behind his eyes. He'll extricate himself from the curl of her body around him, careful not to wake her, and always without fail he'll run a scalding shower and shut the door noiselessly behind him. She can tell, though, once the bed grows cold beside her, when he's being held captive inside his head.

_(it's always hot again in his dreams; sparse and dry instead of the heavy steam that rises from the water)_

He'll stand under the spray for what feels like forever, water pounding away at his heat-reddened skin, and inevitably she'll find her way into the bathroom, rubbing her eyes through the sleeve of one of his dress shirts. She'll shed his clothes and climb into the shower behind him, kiss the puckered gunshot scar at the back of his right shoulder and hold him until the hot water runs out.

_(he's never told her but it's almost like she knows - the kisses feel like an apology for the violence she wreaks in his subconscious)_


	17. Conscience

Ariadne is forced to forego a job in the weeks leading up to graduation, and by all accounts it seems worth the abstinence. Top of her class, honors and all, her future set and safe if she so chooses the path she thought she'd been running. And afterwards, with the exams and theses behind her for good, architecture degree finally solid in her hands, the catharsis she expected is far from the anxiety she's found.

_(nothing left to worry about, but people are not things and she can't force them from her mind)_

It bothers her and worries at her stomach in the middle of the night, and leaves her awake at four in the morning, rain streaking down the windows, watching _Amelie_ in the dark, wrapped up in blankets on the couch.

_(this is ridiculous, she's long past all that crisis of conscience nonsense, and a movie about random acts of kindness has no business making her eyes tear up at the corners)_

She has so few misgivings about building her life around deception-it's frightening, and it sneaks up on her at night when there's no one to distract her from herself.

_(is fear of losing yourself to the dream worse than losing what you've lived by all your life?)_

And then the front door creaks and Arthur is dripping wet with rain and backlit in her doorway, and once the deer-in-headlights look has left her face she's up and pushing the door shut and pulling off his clothes until he's bare and dry again. His presence alone, having his body with her in the darkness, feels like aloe over sunburn; long-fingered hands push her tank top up over her head, lips press open-mouthed kisses to the back of her neck. They fall asleep together, wordless, on the couch.

_(he wraps her back in blankets and his arms, and for the moment it soothes away the itch under her skin)_


	18. Found Out

Fifth lesson. He's been teaching her for all of two weeks, and that's all it's taken to learn she can't even trust herself inside her own head.

_(without trying, her dreamworld is closer to the truth than any time she's worked to make it so)_

She's taken him to London this time, to the crush of humanity in Piccadilly Circus just as the evening's West End shows are letting out. Droves of people pour from the tube station, busy Londoners hurry past lollygagging tourists and their cameras, or stroll leisurely through the square, window-shopping as they pass rugby displays at Lillywhites. Initially she's pleased that neither she nor Arthur seem to arouse suspicion from the sea of projections-initially being the operative word.

_(she wouldn't have even noticed if he hadn't been staring off across the square)_

Anteros looms against the city backdrop, the tips of his outstretched aluminum wings just grazing the sky from the angle of her sightline. The constant flux of life within the statue's shadow pays as little attention to the couple Arthur watches as Ariadne herself had paid them just a moment ago.

_(one of her hands is fisted around his lapel, the other curled around the back of his neck, and Arthur pulls her close with an arm about the small of her back and her face leans up with a smile in the words she speaks against his ear)_

The pair of phantoms twine into each other and though Arthur has looked away Ariadne's face burns-

_(envy, shame, and longing all-exposed and she can't breathe-the god of love requited mocks and Arthur will not meet her eyes)_


	19. A Loss for Words

A muscle works in his jaw and she can tell he's trying very hard not to grind his teeth together, but the tension in his back extends all through his body and no matter what she says Ariadne knows it will not reach or break through the fatigue in his eyes.

_(it's warm outside, and sunny; the breeze feels almost like it's laughing on her skin)_

"What do we do now?" she asks. His gaze is fixed out to the sky, hers is trained on him; monitoring, searching, though for what she doesn't know.

_(the sun is too bright here, stark and eerie, and the sand reflects the sunflare in her eyes and she unconsciously resolves not to create things differently to shade them)__  
_  
The silence is thick and honeyed and unreal and she decides that it's what will keep her head anchored in reality—strangely golden like the perpetual sunrise-sunset hue the sky's been ever since they crawled out of the sea. It plays over him and accentuates everything in his face she fears and loves and cannot look away from for the life of her.

_(he has the look of a man broken, lost and found and driven and hopeless all in the same breath)__  
_  
"I don't know, Ari."


	20. This Means War

The bottom of his feet are ticklish.

_(she shrieks with triumph and lunges at him from across the bed, and she's laughing and he's swearing and nothing else in the world exists but the sweet rush of juvenile victory)__  
_  
Ariadne will deny it to the grave, but ever since her third lesson with Arthur, she's made it a bit of a personal crusade to find just one spot where he's ticklish. He's exploited hers on multiple occasions, including one time where she'd yelped in front of Cobb and Eames when he'd purposely brushed up the inside of her arm, and she'll be damned if she can't find some way to make him squirm.

_(he's yanking his feet away and trying his absolute hardest to ward her off with his hands, but when he grabs one of her wrists she just goes after him with the other hand and christ, it's hard to keep a hold on her when she's wriggling around like that)_

Eventually he manages to pin both her hands together, and she's sprawled across his lap and giggling like an absolute lunatic when he attempts to call a truce. She agrees for the time being, but if he thinks she isn't going to lie in wait for the first second his toes aren't tucked up into the legs of his sweatpants, he will be sadly, sadly mistaken.

_(and she will be in for a rude awakening if she thinks he's going to let her win that easily)_

"You _do_ laugh after all!" Ariadne grins as Arthur finally releases her wrists, and flops back into the mattress. "Eames owes me twenty euro in the morning."

_(he's going to go for her ribs, he's decided)_

"Profit from my misery, why don't you." Arthur smiles a cheshire smirk and before she can so much as breathe Ariadne finds herself doubled over and kicking and howling with laughter as she fights to fend off his assault.

_(he takes pity on her soon, he really does, but he has her arms up above her head and her chest is heaving, breathing hard, mess of curls strewn everywhere, and pity turns to something much more suited to darkness and closed doors than just a respite from a game)_


	21. Protective

Tonight, it's Eames rather than Arthur who's the last to leave the warehouse before her. He lingers around the opposite side of her workbench, aimlessly paging through some dossier or other until by chance she glances up and locks her eyes with his.

_(he holds himself loosely, relaxed and at home as a cat in the sun, but that face of his has whole worlds buried in his eyes and not all of them are ones she's keen to visit)_

"I'd be careful with Arthur, if I were you," he says, and Ariadne feels her ears heat with the shame of a child caught with her finger in a tub of frosting. Eames spares her the indignity of staring at her, and for that she isn't sure whether to feel slighted or thankful; he wanders off toward the door, all interest in her personal life seemingly lost, as languid and nonchalant as ever.

_(it's the same coiled, wild-cat elegance she imagines is what keeps Eames alive in the dreams, as it's doubtful that that easy, devil-may-care attitude of his is useful while being assaulted by projections)_

"There are skeletons in that man's closet even he's not prepared to face." He grabs his jacket, slings it over his shoulder. "Watch yourself."

_(part of her is still shrinking from embarrassment, but another small and strong-willed little part flares in defiance at being treated like a child-when none of this team would be anywhere without her)_

"I appreciate the concern, Eames," her exacto knife cuts the model foam board a bit more violently than necessary, "but I'm a big girl."

_(he faces her and there's a sudden hard-edge to his eyes, and a narrow smile Ariadne doesn't quite understand)_

"I didn't say it for your benefit, darling." And with that puzzling smile, the Forger strides away.


	22. Trials and Condemnation

_(her presence is as much a comfort to him as it is immense pressure weighing on his chest; she is his breath while he's left gasping desperately, a Salem witch condemned and crushed beneath stones without any crimes to confess)_

He's up early—too early, but despite the dreamless night there's a heavy rush of adrenaline singing in his veins like fears through a dying man's head. His die rests on the side table and he casts it once, just to be sure; the brush of skin on skin sets his every nerve alight and he needs a double-take, again just to be sure. Ariadne's cheek is pillowed on his shoulder, fast asleep, and her arm draped across his chest and his fingers tangled with hers seem far too delicate, too intimate a thing for a man like him to wake up to.

_(you'll break her; you'll ruin her, take everything from her, and then what? apologize?)_

Mostly he wants to run. But it's his bed and his flat and his arms he can't seem to unfasten from her body, and the black monster growling in his stomach says to hell with it, she's chosen you this way and if you fall, she's falling too, she's made her choice, so be it.

_(how long are you intending to pretend this can go on?)_

But when he thinks of pushing her away he can't, it aches, and it may just condemn him all the same. There is no answer that will not end in wreckage for them both. He's been jealous all his life of people blessed with her kind of devotion, and now that he's found his own wretched self blessed he doesn't know how to accept it.

_(she murmurs in her sleep, soft sounds against his skin that make him pull her close as if he could protect her from himself)_


	23. Taken Care Of

She must be dreaming. This is just far too bizarre to be reality.

_(she would even laugh but she's pretty sure it'll make her cough up her insides, so she holds it in and ends up coughing anyway from the strain)_

"Stop dying over there," he calls from her tiny kitchen, "I'm doing this for _your _health, not mine."

_(he sounds so disgruntled and looks so out of place that this time Ariadne has to laugh, she simply can't help herself, sick or not)_

"I never pegged you for the domestic type, Arthur, this is new and exciting information to me," she croaks past a weak smile. He doesn't even need to turn around for her to know he's rolling his eyes.

_(there's clanging and a crash and she thinks he may have broken something from the swearing under his breath, but waking up to extra blankets and him cooking in her kitchen is more than worth the eventual clean-up)_

"You act like it's a wonder I know how to use a stove," he puts the steaming soup down on the side table and sits beside her badger den of blankets on the couch. It smells fantastic, but the thought of food right now just makes her want to retch. "I've lived alone for years, Ari, how else do you think I've survived this long?"

_(it's a side of him she's never seen before and it makes her swell inside that he's allowed her in as far as he has, if only inch by inch)_

"I don't know," she coughs again, and forces a spoonful of soup down into her protesting stomach. "I figured you for a typical bachelor living out of his microwave."

_(he leans over and kisses her forehead, and it seems far more intimate than a kiss on the forehead should be)_

"Oh ye of little faith," he says, and smiles into her hair, an arm around her shoulders as she burrows against his side.


	24. Crossfire

_(he is totally, unflinchingly, and desperately in love with her and god, oh god, oh god, anything but this to make him realize—)_

There's a lot of blood. She's coughing and trying so hard not to cry and he wants this to be a dream so badly he would tear out his own heart to make it so, but he forces down the bile in his throat and puts pressure on the wound.

_(vaguely he can hear Eames roaring into his phone and he hopes to hell it's emergency services on the other end)_

"I really…liked this dress," she croaks and there's a weak, watery smile on her lips even as her teeth grit through the pain—blood seeps thick and red through the teal fabric and stains it dark like bruises and his hands are slippery where they press through his jacket.

_(her face clenches and her eyes flutter shut and he can tell it's hard for her to even open them again) _

"Shhh, Ari, Ari, look at me," he says, one hand on her cheek to guide her gaze and the other buried in fabric and blood, "I need you to stay awake, okay? Just for a little while." There's a tremor way down deep in his throat and even though there's no way she'll have heard it he knows it's there and he refuses to let her see him scared.

_(Eames' great heavy hands hold the ruined coat to Ariadne's side, and he's saying something Arthur doesn't hear and all he can do is clutch his lover's hand against his chest and count the seconds til he hears the sirens howl) _

"It's going to be alright. You're going to be alright."


	25. Caught Up in You

She wakes to the sterile smell of sickness and harsh light filtering through thin curtains, and it stings her eyes but it's a welcome kind of pain—even the dull ache throbbing through her side with every heartbeat feels like the pulsing of relief. At the back of her head a voice niggles and she shoves it back down; when she'd passed out in the ambulance…she'd fully expected not to wake up.

_(I never knew there'd come a day when I'd be saying to you, don't let this good love slip away)_

She's cold from the flimsy hospital gown and a radio plays low from somewhere in the room—no, there's a speaker, and it sounds like her iPod—classic rock blooming softly in the background, and relief turns to something that sends shivers like breaking waves surging down her back.

_(don't, don't you know the kind of man I am? no, said I'd never fall in love again) _

Arthur is here. Leaning over onto her bed, his head on his arms, asleep.

_(but it's real and the feeling comes shining through)_

Mercifully, the IV is hooked up to the wrist on her opposite side, and she's able to push her fingers gently through his hair. He's disheveled, still in the ruined clothes he'd been wearing the night she was shot—she can see what must be her blood smeared like rust on his sleeves—but he's never left her.

_(I'm so caught up in you, little girl, and I never did suspect a thing)_

She smoothes her hand over his cheek; there's a few days' worth of stubble and it scratches and despite all the tactile evidence surrounding her, she still can't believe he's never left her side.

_(so caught up in you, little girl, that I never want to get myself free)_

Her eyes sting and she wants to laugh or cry but it makes everything hurt and comes out more like a snuffle, and Arthur lifts his head and holds her cold hand against his face and kisses her palm, and the mix of emotions she sees there is like nothing else on the face of the earth.


	26. Damages

"Eames?" she asks frantically—as soon as she's lucid and dealing with the pain enough to fall back down into reality.

_(she could honestly use the morphine but she needs to hear this as herself and she doesn't trust the drugs to spare her memory)_

"Off the grid, for now," Arthur leans forward, elbows on his knees, and the line between his eyebrows deepens. "He took out the one who attacked you."

Ariadne swallows. "Is he safe? Does he know—?" Arthur nods and she releases a breath she hadn't known she was holding _(she swallows again to choke back tears of relief that well up and clog her throat and make her face throb with heat)_. "Who was he? The gunman?"

"Russian. Some kind of bodyguard, we think. He had no ID other than a card with his photo and employer."

"And the Mark?" Arthur hesitates for a second, and Ariadne picks at a loose thread on the hospital blanket. Dread settles in her gut.

_(they can't afford to botch another job and failure sits heavy on her shoulders) _

"Saito is taking care of it."

_"Saito?"_ she hisses and instantly regrets it; her stitches protest and send flares of pain lancing through her at the pressure in her lungs.

A wry, mirthless smile angles across his lips. "He said he's returning the favor." He rubs her cold hand between both of his own. "Besides, you're valuable. To far more than just me."

_(useful, she'll give them, but not much farther than that—at least, not anymore, but she hates the obsidian-glass edges in his eyes and would rather have him smile than ponder all the ways she's fallen short)_

"Hey," she says, and runs her fingers over the back of his right shoulder. They come to rest on the ridges of old scar tissue there. "We match now."


	27. Repair

She sleeps fitfully, and Arthur hopes to God it's just because of the oppressive lack of privacy that comes with a stay in the hospital. He can't exactly say he's enjoying it himself—he's been wearing the same clothes for four days—but leaving Ariadne here, even for a few hours, is the last thing in the cosmos he's willing to do. Irrational? Yes. But the shock of almost having her torn away from him is still too sharp and present in his mind; he is acutely aware that a life of crime requires very close acquaintance with disaster, but knowing and accepting it are two very different things and it doesn't make the harsh reality any easier to face.

_(she'd begged him, fear so tangible in her eyes that it rippled through the rest of her small body, to make sure no word of the firefight reaches her family)_

He holds her hand whenever she closes her eyes, as much for his comfort as hers. It's the only way her hands have warmed up since she's been here, and he's glad to be able to lend her that small comfort rather than nothing at all.

_(she sleeps better with him touching her as well; he'd rather it anyway, and physical contact grounds him here as much as it does her)_

He knows it's not the pain that bothers her. She avoids the subject of her injury like the plague, and only allows it when the nurses check on her and she has no choice. If he knows her by now, she's worrying herself into oblivion—and as much as he tells her it isn't her fault she matches him with all the silent pleading ways it is.

_(between the job and Eames, keeping her secrets and making amends, Ariadne is eating away at her insides and Arthur worries he won't be able to fill in all the pieces she tears out of herself)_


	28. Sweet Slow Burn

Ariadne dreams them dappled sunlight and a bedroom and a soft white dress he slides reverent hands over like a whisper through delicate silence. The fluid folds hug her small body and drape like falling water to her knees, and Arthur traces the fabric's edges with fingertips that skim along the low dip at her back. His hair is loose and falls around his face, woven through by the slender fingers holding him still.

_(her kiss is long and hot and languid on his lips)_

And from there it's all a tangle of hesitant hands and shed clothing and shifting gravity that pulls them close and sets the world on edge. Heat rises between them, licks at their skin and spreads its sweet torture beneath this slow-burning haze; he is impatient but she catches his wrists and forces his hands to her waist, and she slips her palms up his sides and down his chest and works his shirt out from beneath his belt. Her body pressed against his thrums with life and he aches to pin her up against the wall and take her there, right now—but this dream is not the place, and he will love her soft and slow and kiss her 'til her breath comes short and ragged.

_(her pulse beats rapid and staccato, begging 'closer, closer…')_

He pushes the straps of the dress down over her shoulders and layers kisses on the skin he reveals, and her slender fingers clench at his shirt and tug until the buttons come undone. His totem lies forgotten in his jacket on the floor and she is the only real thing left, pressed up close as he leaves hot, open-mouthed kisses on her throat, and he eases her back into the mattress when she sighs into his hair.

_(make love to me)_


	29. Transient

**A/N: Okay, since I've had a bunch of questions lately I figure it's time I gave you guys an explanation. The drabbles in this story are not in chronological order. It's meant to read like you're pulling jumbled photos out of a shoebox, like you're seeing little snippets of their lives and getting the emotions and images from just a short glimpse of each scene. I'm sorry for the confusion, I probably should have explained the set-up from the beginning. Anyway, I hope you still like it! Here's the next of the bunch:**

* * *

He misses Paris.

_(her beignets for breakfast and his pain au chocolat, and the powdered sugar she'd smear on his sleeve in the morning)_

He has never in his life experienced anything as singularly draining as those months in France had been. The nature of the job had made him nervous. Ariadne had made him nervous. His own head had made him nervous. He thinks it's impressive he made it through the whole ordeal without developing a rainbow of ulcers.

_(his clothes in her washer and that singular morning of confusion when he'd learnt Ariadne fancied wearing brightly-colored men's briefs instead of girly underthings)_

He's stayed stateside for awhile—a long while—after going his own way in Los Angeles; he'd caught a late flight out to Chicago O'Hare and a cab to his old apartment in Pilsen. Since then he's remembered just how stale and sometimes opressive the air is here, and when he thinks about it he isn't exactly sure why he's even stayed. The two jobs he'd taken since landing at LAX had wrapped up quickly. There's not much to hang around for, save a few no-longer-fresh graves and what's left of a family with no interest in seeing his face anymore.

_(her body pressed up flush against his back, skin-on-skin, and the gentle sighs and murmurs she would whisper in her sleep)_

Her term is almost over. He can feasibly go back. And if it were so simple he'd have boarded that flight weeks ago; instead he turns his phone over in his hands, and his mind works again and again through the hundreds of ways she could have found to put him in her past.


	30. Heart Racing

It's not as if he's made any sort of effort at being covert. She's just that oblivious.

_(her iPod is blasting into her ears and he revises his earlier assessment from 'oblivious' to 'it's a wonder she's aware of anything else at all,' and she's singing into a hairbrush in a pair of skinny jeans and a watermelon-print bra)_

He laughs softly to himself and leans his arm up against the doorjamb, thinking a number of less-than-pure thoughts as he admires her shimmying around the room. He'd put money on her taking at least until the song is over to notice him leering with what he imagines must look like a slightly creepy grin curving up half his mouth, but she'll forgive him for it.

_(oh lord, the song's even yelling something about skin-tight jeans and his patience is rapidly deteriorating in favor of anticipation)_

"What in God's name are you doing?" Ariadne jumps a good six inches and his smirk widens when she presses her hand to her heart, the wide-eyed prey look leaving her face as soon as it arrives.

_(his eyes run her up and down again)_

"_Jesus_, Arthur!" She releases breathy laughter and hugs her arms around herself. "Do that creepy-rapist sneak-up-on-me-in-my-undies thing again, why don't you?"

_(her face is flushed with life and probably embarrassment, and she's absolutely gorgeous)_

"Just admiring, don't mind me," he says. "Those new?"

_(he follows her fingers tucking her hair behind her ear)_

"You like?" she asks with a smirk of her own.

_(her hands smooth down her thighs)_

"Honestly?" She nods. "I hate them. They're all wrong for you." It's a complete lie, of course, they look stellar on her. Her face falls but he moves to slide his palms down her arms and kisses the side of her face. "Let me take them off for you…"


	31. What Little I Can Do

It is a rare day when Ariadne will wake him up by straddling his back, her deft hands working his muscles as if she was put on this earth for the specific purpose of giving him that very massage.

_(lower, lower)_

She doesn't tell him why she does it, and Arthur doesn't ask. She doesn't know what she'd tell him if he did. How could she describe watching his entire body seize, the muscles in his neck standing out like cables, and not being able to do anything for him? She can't imagine waking up with that sort of pain. She'll lie beside him and force herself to wait until the episode passes, then smooth her hands over his face, his arms, his chest, every part of him she can reach, until she feels his heartbeat slow to normal.

_(ahhhh yes, love, a little harder)_

The worst is hearing him talk in his sleep. Nothing intelligible, but the soft noises caught at the back of his throat sound as if it takes him every ounce of willpower to keep from screaming. It tortures her to listen, to lay there in the dark and know there's nothing she can do to take it away from him.

_(there-just there-ohhh, god, Aria...)_

But in truth she isn't sure she wants to face his demons, and she's certainly not about to force him to. What they have together now is easy, a rhythm they've both fallen into and are loath to interrupt. So for now, then, she'll hold her tongue and rub him down and do everything she can to make sure nothing physically hurts in the morning.

_(don't stop, please don't stop-)_


	32. Notice

A coffee cup plunks down on the table in front of her, but she's on a roll and if she doesn't finish this sketch right now she'll forget the image of the fortress in her mind and have to agonize tomorrow over those maddening elusive little details hovering just at the fringes of her consciousness.

_(hey, he says, his half-smile softer than usual out of the corner of her eye; cream and a vanilla shot, right?)_

Arthur pulls up a stool beside her and leans over the table, hands clasped in font of him, patient as he waits for her to reach a lull in her art. She smiles a little, still focused on the paper; she's found it hard to meet his eyes after that last—well, she doesn't really want to dwell on their last lesson's visit to London.

_(thanks; how'd you know? Oh—and could you grab that eraser for me?)_

When he passes it to her his hand slides along her palm and it jars her, sends a shiver up her arm and as much as she'd like to contain it her attention is no longer on the drawing in her hands.

_(I pay attention, he says, 's what I'm here for)_

The eraser sits forgotten in her palm. She doesn't realize she's holding her breath when he brings his fingers up close to her face, brushes her cheek, the barest ghost of contact as he tucks a lock of hair behind her shoulder.

_(my dreams aren't so different from yours, he says, if you pay attention to the people in them)_

He kisses gently, but it rocks her to her toes.


End file.
